Ubisoft plays its all-out with the release of the new “Assassin’s Creed”

Such a feverishness in the industry, “I had never seen that,” said Charles-Louis Planade, analyst at Midcap Partners, a few days before the release of the new episode of the Assassin’s Creed series started in 2007.

Since 2020, Ubisoft, one of the biggest players in video games in the world with nearly 18,000 employees, has experienced a long series of setbacks: disappointing launches, falling from the stock market, sexual and moral harassment scandals targeting former executives, strike movements …

Now at the foot of the wall, the group puts on its flagship saga to relaunch itself with a very ambitious opus anchored in feudal Japan. Nearly twenty studios and hundreds of people worked on it for almost five years, for a budget of several hundred million euros, according to certain estimates.

Rather well received by criticisms, “Assassin’s Creed Shadows” – marketed on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series – displays a “overall favorable” note of 81 on 100 on the Metacritic Aggregation Aggregation site, one more point than the Valhalla episode, released in 2020 and the biggest success in the series.

For the American journalist Stephen Totilo, Shadows is the “most beautiful” and “most pleasant to play” component, while the specialized site IGN grees a very good episode which does not “completely reinvent” the formula.

Snowball effect

This lack of renewal could end up boring some players, dreads Julien Pillot, economist specializing in cultural industries. For him, the recent counter-

Ubisoft performances are “perhaps the sign of a disenchantment of the public for its games”.

“Everyone crosses their fingers so that this outing is a huge success,” said Planade, who anticipates a snowball effect for the whole European industry in the event of bad sales.

With around 4,000 employees in France out of the 15,000 in the sector, Ubisoft is the video game locomotive in this country, also recalls the analyst.

The company regularly serves as a springboard out of school and many of its former employees have founded studios in France and abroad.

To get her head out of the water, she started a cost reduction plan in early 2023, resulting in studios closings and the departure of nearly 2,000 employees.

Several options for the future

Despite this, the group failed to bounce back on the financial markets. While her action was exchanged at more than 100 euros ten years ago, she reached her lowest level in September of last year, at 9.01 euros.

On the Paris Stock Exchange, it took 2.50 %, at 12.91 euros, pushed by first very positive evaluations of players on the PC Steam PC sales platform.

This situation, in a sector in the midst of a growth crisis for two years, pushed Ubisoft to announce in January that it was now studying several options for its future, resulting in many speculation.

If a joint acquisition with the Chinese tech tencent giant – which has 10 % of its capital – to get the business out of the stock market was first mentioned, several media now report the possible creation of a new entity, refocused on the key brands of the group, which would give in the rest of its catalog.

“All the options are on the table,” sums up Mr. Planade, for whom the balance of power in the negotiation will be largely determined by the success of Shadows.

Source: AFP